Still here!

 While it's five years since I posted on this blog, I have continued to read posts by the people I follow. For some reason I am unable to post comments. Maybe if I wake up my own blog the problem will be solved.

Five years. Good times. Sad times. Happy times. Anxious times. Frustrating times. Fun times. Loving times. Thankful times. Family times. Couple times. In other words, living normal times.

"Getting old is not for the faint hearted," is an overused saying. But true, I concede. " I AM NOT OLD. I AM 21 WITH YEARS OF EXPERIENCE," is the sign I picked up on my final trip to New Zealand last year. 

That was my fifth trip during 2023. The one when I held my younger brother as he quietly left his life after very many years of terrible health that challenged his will to live. Eventually he decided it was time to leave, so he did just that, after waiting for me to fulfil my promise to come to be with him as he gently let go of his life. 

On my penultimate trip to support him through a crisis he had held me and, through tears, had said that I had taken care of him when he was a baby and now, here I was taking care of him at the end of his life. As the eldest of a large family, I was the mother from the fourth child down. Something that, as an adult, was far from my own thoughts but not from his or another sibling's memory. I was just six years older than him.

As the eldest child of a large, unhappy family, I bore a lot of responsibility for taking care of my siblings and was held responsible for any of their behaviours. In the dark times my mantra was " The sun always comes up tomorrow." Now, seven decades later, I realise how powerful holding on to that mantra was. And continues to be so.

So, now after the sun has risen six more times, my husband of fifty seven years and I will embark on the most complex holiday of our lifetime. One month in Vietnam. Complex because we are now both physically challenged and it seems half of our 14 kg packed baggage consists of medicines and emergency snacks. And my walking stick.

I ask myself if I am crazy to take a month long holiday in a country that, according to the travel experts on Trip Advisor, appears to be more challenging to travel around than any other country we've been to in the region. A country where many local tours have an upper age limit of 75 or 80. 

I'm not fainthearted, so when the sun comes up in a few days we'll be heading to the airport in an uber, armed with those tricky to get visas, a flexible itinerary which includes an intention to visit four places, each for a week, taking each day as it comes, said medicines and emergency diabetic snacks, travel insurance, and loads of information of private tour/transport providers who will hopefully disregard the upper age limits of advertised tours.

Getting excited for our first major overseas trip since we snuck back into the country the day before the covid borders shut Australia for a very long time.

Hello, Vietnam!